A Clickbank Review

The ClickBank affiliate marketing program has been around for more than ten years now, making it one of the pioneers and one of the veterans in the world of internet marketing.

Its longevity can only attest to the success of the vendors, buyers, and affiliate marketers who use the site, so obviously it’s been doing something right, all this time. Yet it’s never been perfect, and despite so many advances in technology and even site design in the past decade, people’s approval of ClickBank still sometimes carries a tinge of reservation.

A ClickBank Review

The ProBlogger website wrote a review on the ClickBank service back in 2005, as part of a series on affiliate marketing websites.

There were a couple of very positive factors that served as recommendations for ClickBank, one of those being that it was quite easy to get involved, whether you were a product vendor, a marketer, or a buyer.

What is meant by this is that you do not have to wait for an acceptance from Clickbank like you do with other affiliate networks. You simply look through the marketplace, select a product you like, then set up the hoplink on your site and start promoting.

They Can Offer Very Attractive Commission Percentages

But for affiliates in particular, the other great thing was that ClickBank paid high commissions on the products sold. Indeed, some commissions were set as high as seventy percent of the price. And none of this has changed in the intervening years, so those remain attractive features of the service.

As far as complaints went, though, back in 2005, there were two main ones. Both the ProBlogger reviewer and many people who subsequently commented mentioned the clunkiness of the ClickBank website design.

But more than that, all of them noted the dubious quality of a great many of the products offered for sale.

Some of them, as the reviewer remarked, were “get rich quick programs, dodgy eBooks, etc,” though there were also some very good products too.

In fact, the commentators added that even though commissions were good, buyers had a time period where they could get refunds if they were unsatisfied, and on some products the refund rate was well above fifty percent. So you could never really count on your commissions being permanent until after that time period.

There was also a further drawback in the fact that affiliate marketers didn’t receive much more than text links to use in their online promotions. However, ClickBank is still recommended as a good place to find products to market and earn commissions, as long as the marketer is careful which products they choose.

Clickbank Listens To Its Affiliates And Makes Many Changes

Even at the ProBlogger review, as you read how the comments progressed over a couple of years, it was evident that ClickBank was taking some of the criticisms of its system to heart. It has gradually added features to try to improve the usability of its website. But even as late as March of 2009, it still had no images to go along with the promotional links to add some punch to the marketing efforts.

To get banners to promote any products you found at the ClickBank marketplace you would have to then visit the vendors website and scroll usually to the bottom of the page and click on their affiliate links page. Once there you may have to enter some details to access additional resources such as banners, email templates and even blog posts for your sites.

However, the consensus seems to be that while ClickBank has its drawbacks, it’s still generally a good program to become involved in, both for vendors and marketing affiliates. Certainly, one can forgive a great many flaws when the commissions run so high.

ClickBank, the affiliate marketing veteran, remains one of the leaders in the affiliate business.